New Hampshire Votes . . . While Most of Us Look On in Envy
Today New Hampshire holds its presidential primary. As in Iowa, voters in the Granite State will have a chance to effectively end two, three, maybe four presidential campaigns, before those of us in 48 other states have a chance to cast a ballot. Then on February 20, South Carolina votes, and in most cycles it effectively picks the eventual Republican nominee. (Last year, Newt Gingrich won the Palmetto State; Romney recovered in Florida and racked up more wins on Super Tuesday.) Every four years there's rumblings of discontent that these small states get to go first, and talk of changing the order. Every four years, the rumbling never amounts to anything. At least Iowa didn't make its choice based on ethanol support this year. Secretary of State William Gardner predicts that today 282,000 votes will be cast in the Republican primary, 268,000 votes in the Democratic primary. That's a 62 percent turnout rate. By the way, there's a chance a certain number of registered Democrats may show up today and want to vote for Donald Trump or John Kasich or any one of the Republicans with crossover appeal. They can't; the last day to change parties was October 30. Over on Newsday, Andrew E. Smith and David W. Moore have a nice column dispelling some of the conventional wisdom about New Hampshire. For starters, expect at least one significant surprise compared to the polls: In 1980, a CBS poll showed Ronald Reagan beating George H.W. Bush by 45 points, though his actual margin of victory was 27 points. - In 1984, the final Washington Post-ABC News poll had Walter Mondale tied with Gary Hart, and the final CNN poll had Mondale winning by six points. Hart won by nine. - In 1988, Gallup had Bob Dole beating George H.W. Bush by eight points, and the Post-ABC poll had Dole up by three.Bush won by nine. - In 1996, CNN-Time showed Dole winning by 15 points. Patrick Buchanan won by one point. - In 2000, the average of all polls showed John McCain beating George W. Bush by eight points. McCain won by 18 points, more than twice what polls predicted. Though this was a larger average error than in 2008, it was not labeled a "fiasco," nor did the AAPOR investigate the causes. Most famously, all of the pollsters predicted Barack Obama would win the Democratic primary in 2008, and Hillary Clinton won. Why are polls often wrong? It's not usually because of methodological issues but because of timing. When pollsters conclude their interviews (some by Friday, others as late as Sunday), many voters have not made up their minds. Exit polls show that 30 to 45 percent of voters make their decisions in the final three days of the campaign, and 15 to 20 percent do so on Election Day itself. Smith and Moore note, "Among registered voters, less than 15 percent are actually 'independent,' and only about one-third to one-half of them vote in the primary." Would a Bloomberg Presidential Bid Be Short-Lived? Hooray! "Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg acknowledged for the first time that he was weighing a 2016 presidential bid." Bring . . . it . . . on! The Atlantic magazine noticed we've heard these sorts of rumors before . . . about 25 times before, in fact. As I observed in 2010, "Speeches by Mayor and Potential Presidential Candidate Mike Bloomberg get a lot more national attention than speeches by Just The Mayor Mike Bloomberg." Our John Fund observed that yes, Bloomberg has a good shot at getting on the ballot in most states: Theoretically, the obstacles to beginning a race this late aren't terribly daunting. Deadlines for ballot access in most states fall in July or August, so getting his name before voters as an independent would be nothing more than an expensive irritation for someone of Bloomberg's wealth. Richard Winger, the editor of Ballot Access News, estimates that Bloomberg would have to spend $5 million to $6 million to get ballot lines in all 50 states. The first deadline is in Texas, which requires 80,000 valid signatures on petitions be submitted by May 9 of this year. "Five to six million, you say? Wilkins, look in the petty cash drawer!" Fund notes the real challenge is that a Bloomberg third-party bid would have an enormous challenge winning 270 electoral votes. So Bloomberg could run, but he would probably . . . wait for it . . . come up short. I know, I know, I shouldn't tease the diminutive former mayor. Running for president is a . . . tall order. He could have told the country earlier; as is, he's giving the political world . . . short notice. Please, Mike Bloomberg, run for president, and bring your Slurpee-banning ways to the national stage. We saw former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg attempt to ban Slurpees (570 calories) and large Diet Cokes (zero or negligible calories) -- beverage choices of the working class -- but the law's exemption for milk-based beverages means it wouldn't hit the venti java chip Frappuccino from Starbucks (580 calories), the milkshake-in-disguise selection that's more popular among the usually progressive-minded Manhattan Yuppies. (Bloomberg's large soda ban was struck down as unconstitutional.) Bloomberg himself has notoriously bad eating habits: He dumps salt on almost everything, even saltine crackers. He devours burnt bacon and peanut butter sandwiches. He has a weakness for hot dogs, cheeseburgers, and fried chicken, washing them down with a glass of merlot. And his snack of choice? Cheez-Its. . . . An examination of what enters the mayoral mouth reveals that Mr. Bloomberg is an omnivore with his own glaring indulgences, many of them at odds with his own policies. And he struggles mightily to restrain his appetite. . . . Mr. Bloomberg, 67, likes his popcorn so salty that it burns others' lips. (At Gracie Mansion, the cooks deliver it to him with a salt shaker.) He sprinkles so much salt on his morning bagel "that it's like a pretzel," said the manager at Viand, a Greek diner near Mr. Bloomberg's Upper East Side town house. Not even pizza is spared a coat of sodium. When the mayor sat down to eat a slice at Denino's Pizzeria Tavern on Staten Island recently, this reporter spotted him applying six dashes of salt to it. Bloomberg similarly sought a law requiring New Yorkers to separate their food scraps for composting; we all know the astronomical odds against the billionaire former mayor ever willingly personally partaking of the task of separating coffee grounds and the stuff growing hair in the Tupperware in the back of the refrigerator from the rest of his trash. Voters Are Angry. They've Got Good Reasons to Be Angry. A couple of points that were trimmed from yesterday's column arguing that the Republican National Committee's "Growth and Opportunity Project" -- more commonly known as the 2012 autopsy -- was spectacularly wrong when it called for the GOP to pass comprehensive immigration reform . . . Maybe the Republican base would have been more open to arguments in favor of a path to citizenship if the past three years had been better ones. A real booming economy would have alleviated economic anxieties about illegal immigrants' impact on wages; annual GDP growth hasn't hit 3 percent since 2005, wages are stagnant and even Hillary Clinton is declaring, "The economy has not been working for most Americans." As Jon Gabriel wryly puts it, "My favorite part of the Obama era is all the racial healing." Oppose a path to citizenship and you'll almost certainly get called xenophobic or racist; support it and you'll probably encounter at least one raging opponent screaming of a "Third World invasion" or making a Photoshop of Jeb Bush's wife Columba as the beastly "Columbacabra." A better, less reflexively partisan and fair-minded president could have led a better, more substantive, more respectful discussion about immigration, both legal and illegal. In 2014, Obama shamelessly demagogued the issue in a national address: "Are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents' arms? Or are we a nation that values families, and works together to keep them together?" Americans who want to see laws enforced get justifiably angry when they're accused of wanting to harm children, and when their opposition to illegal immigration is deliberately mislabeled as "anti-immigrant." The world beyond our borders seems more dangerous than at the start of Obama's second term. In 2014, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel put it bluntly, "The world is exploding all over." One of the San Bernardino shooters walked right past the much-touted Department of Homeland Security counterterrorism and vetting measures. German women endure a wave of rape attacks by Muslim men as their chancellor welcomed 1.1 million migrants in one year. The federal government somehow became even less competent in Obama's second term. Since the RNC report, we've seen the Internal Revenue Service target Tea Party groups for their political views, the Veterans Administration let thousands of veterans die waiting for care, the Office of Personnel Management let Chinese hackers get the goods on 22 million government employees and the NSA hand the keys to the kingdom to Edward Snowden, only to watch him run to Moscow. America's in a worse position now than it was in March 2013 -- and that's why the solutions offered at that moment sound so tin-eared now. (It's also why so many Republicans worked so hard to beat Obama in 2012; we saw this coming.) Americans are angrier, more pessimistic, less patient, fed up. The nominee has openly address the causes of that mood and alchemically transform it to a relentless determination to win in November. ADDENDA: Our Brendan Bordelon was there for the dawning of the Second Age of Aquarius.  | 
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